


Present

by shelter



Series: Evenings without echoes [9]
Category: Claymore (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Copious amounts of alcohol - Freeform, Dietrich teaching life lessons on a cold night, F/F, One Shot, Orphaned Kids, POV Second Person, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24503563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelter/pseuds/shelter
Summary: Post-series. On her last week in the orphanage, Miata and her friends sneak out for a drink.
Relationships: Miata (Claymore)/Original Female Character
Series: Evenings without echoes [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/489364
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Present

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fushiacircle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fushiacircle/gifts).



> This fic is a quarantine gift for [Fushiacircle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fushiacircle/pseuds/Fushiacircle). Sorry it took so long!

.

.

.

A week before officially graduating from the church orphanage school, you decide to raid the Guardsmen's stables and set free the entire regiment's horses.

A torrent of stallions charge the streets of Rabona. In the ensuing confusion, you and the seniors seize several of the best steeds in the city and ride north from the city walls.

They ride through the low hills, past the dim shadows of village churches. Rabona, the only home you've ever known, recedes like a sprawled giant. You have no idea where they're headed, but these are the boys and girls you've grown up with, who have shared every waking moment in that claustrophobic orphanage school. They ride north, as if drawn by some magnetic energy, and all you can do is follow.

The moon rises, a blank bald lunar head peeking over the jagged white teeth of snowcapped peaks. Following the ascent of the moon, the group rides through a thick copse of trees. They scream and yell. But all you can think of is an ambush, bandits in the trees, a defensible position – threat assessment, what they taught you in the regiment – blind spots, risks, pullback scenarios, possibilities for ambush –

"We've been riding for hours!"

"Are we there yet?"

"Almost."

"Sure or not."

"Husayn always knows where he's going."

"Oh go screw yourself!"

But they break through the forest path and you see a village by the shores of an alpine lake. The dark forms of mountains cluster like a fence above the shaggy pines. And in the centre of it all, by the shores of the snowmelt-still lake, waits a cluster of houses.

You can't take your eyes off the moonlight, or the mirror image of the village in the lake. Perhaps this is the biggest proof that you've been in Rabona for too long.

The seniors ride right up to the tavern. They dismount with the grace of young men and women having zero cavalry training. In a tangle of arms and legs, laughing, the moonlight shines off their exposed skin, sweaty from riding bareback all evening. They swagger up to the tavern, their tattered, second-hand tunics and mud-splattered dresses all obvious. And no one's going to refuse them.

Because Husayn's got Sister Latea's bag of gold coins.

You want to join them but the lake is so pretty. It draws you, the way the moon melts in the water when the surface gets disturbed – the great deep black of the shallows on the far end – the –

"Miata? You coming?"

"The lake," you say, "is beautiful."

"Husayn?"

"Go on. I'll stay with her."

You're used to this. Being drawn in by something you don't really understand. Taking precious time away from what everyone else thinks is important. Fortunately your peers understand. They look to the lake, then at you, and they disappear into the tavern with its sensory overload of wine-y smells and the timbre of conversation.

"Never been here before?" Husayn asks.

"No. And you?"

"Snuck out many times. But never at night."

Honestly, you're not really interested in what the seniors do, all that drinking and feasting. You're together all the time in the orphanage anyway. You prefer the grooved face of the lake reflecting yours. You prefer to stare at the point where ripples become black and imagination overtakes actual depth.

Husayn doesn't follow you down to water's edge. A wise decision: dead weeds, splinters of wood and stale water scum all capture the moonlight in glinting flashes. Still, you step into the shallows, water flooding your boots. It sends a chill up your legs. Swells of disrupted water emanate into the unknown, lasting forever till they touch the feet of the mountains opposite.

"Thanks for just now," Husayn says.

"For committing theft and arson?"

"Well, yeah. It means a lot to them," he says, turning his head to the tavern. "And I wouldn't have been able to get away with it."

You think what he means is: they'll forgive you even if you get caught, because you're a hero of Rabona.

But Husayn recovers quickly: "It means a lot to me too. Even if it's to get out of the city for a night."

You withdraw from the water, and sit on the rocks. Behind you, Husayn's pulse burns and flickers, like a twitching candle. Is he just staying by because he's appreciative? Or because he actually cares? You don't know. In a week's time, you'll never know.

But what you do know are Sister Latea's words to you, on a cold autumn day as you're cleaning the pews in the cathedral:

"That Husayn has his heart in the right place."

Typical Sister Latea. The eye-of-the-Organisation-turned-nun of the orphanage, who you hunted for years, who knew when and where to push Phantom Miria – had been dropping these strange hints to you as your official discharge from her care loomed.

"Husayn?"

"You've known him for how long?"

"Six years in your classes."

"He's a decent one. Pity he's a Southerner."

It took you a while to understand. But when you did, it was a revelation: all the male orphans were going to the army. And in Rabona, with its immovable militarized hierarchy, southerners were always on the front lines.

"Or you mean, pity he's not of noble blood."

"Ah, you're fast, Miata."

"You taught me."

"And there are some things I can't teach you. Some things you have to do for yourself."

"I hate it when you speak in parables, Sister Latea."

Sister Latea gave you that bright smile, the kind that novice priests fall for in the cathedral. All these years, she was still more beautiful than the saints that the Rabonans spoke so highly of.

But it doesn't change that you're here now, on the shores of this mountain lake, the mirrored moon pausing like a ghostly ship on the waters. Behind, you can feel this young man's heartbeat tipping – tipping into indecisiveness.

"Will you miss us after we go our separate ways?" he asks.

"Of course. I will!"

"You've always helped us. But next week, you're probably going to be our commander."

"I just keep Rabona safe."

"Yeah you do. But you're also a hero –"

"Can we not talk about this?"

He sighs. "Of course," the trip of his pulse, the shuffling of feet. "I'm gonna head inside for a drink."

Then, he's gone. Something stirs in the water, and the moon and the mountains are just blurry ghosts on a unstable tableau.

You take a deep breath, letting the cold air saturate your lungs. What do you feel now? Sister Latea loves to ask you that question. The answer: a slurry of relief, a heavy carcass of discomfort, settling at the base of your stomach.

Waiting by the lake with its stately stillness, you've never been more unsure of anything in your life. Even if everything's been planned by you, Sister Latea and the garrison commanders, the future beyond the orphanage seems as black and unreadable as the lake sprawled out before you.

It's at moments like these that you feel tempted to release your yoki. Just a tiny bit.

Older warriors always claim awakening was the equivalent of succumbing to desire and emotions. Under certain conditions, many preferred a controlled release – push the limit, slowly, studiously – to achieve that illusive balance between power and pleasure. Even Sister Latea once said that the more accustomed a warrior was to awakening, the likelier she would be able to control her feelings.

All you know is that you don't feel pleasure when you let your yoki fly.

You feel relief. A soothing peace. A numbing oblivion.

And also a smoky haze of memories.

"You know it doesn't work, right?" Sister Latea would say.

"What?"

"What you release is so small that I can barely feel it. But it's there."

"I didn't ask you to monitor me, Sister Latea."

"What do you hope to achieve anyway, releasing your yoki like that in an orphanage?"

You told her. She looked confused, and before she responded, you could feel the a seismic shift in her yoki.

"I feel like I'm living someone else's life."

"Someone else's life."

"I see people I don't remember. I see monsters I don't remember fighting," you tell her. "Sometimes, there's a brown-haired girl."

Sister Latea had gone completely still. A counterfeit front, because you could feel her yoki stammering, an anxious lasso twisting into a knot around itself.

The slam of the tavern door brings you back to the lake.

A spectral mist has floated in, giving the town by the lake a ghostly vibe. But you can still see movement: someone walks away from the tavern, right to the where the land ends and the lake sticks out like a swollen lip. Then, he – no, she – throws up, the splash of puke onto the water the most violent sound you've heard tonight.

Amidst the outcropping of shadows, you can see her retching again. The spine of her hunched back shows like a fence through the fabric of her dress. Before she goes again, you come up from behind and hold her hair to the moist delta of her sweaty neck.

"By the goddesses, Miata," she says. "Why do always have to be a damn ghost?"

"You're welcome, Nurit."

"The shit they serve inside is really strong."

Nurit collapses to her haunches. There's a delicate spiderweb of sick still perched on the corner of her lips, and you gently clean it away with a finger. That brief contact with her skin burns your finger with an intense warmth.

"This started out as such a good night."

"It's not over yet," you say.

A hand to the ground, she staggers towards the lake again. But you straighten her elbows, hold her hair. When she does heave, it's just a glorified burp. It still smells like something died in her throat.

"You're a good friend, Miata," she says.

The pungent formula of alcohol and something fried evaporates from her. So you wonder if she really means it. But you still keep her steady as she rises to her feet.

"You should go in," she tells you. "Enjoy our last few days together and all that."

"I'm not a drinker –"

"Ehh nonsense." She puts one hand on your shoulder to stabilise herself. A torque of heat bleeds through your clothes at her touch. "And there's one of your kind inside challenging us to drinks."

"What?"

"See for yourself."

You leave Nurit by the lake, stepping inside the blush of faint light of the tavern. It's exactly what you expect a tavern on a quiet lake in the middle of nowhere should be: dusty, cob-webbed interior, sun-bleached notices slipping from the walls, all drenched in the sour pheromones of sweat, mead and adrenaline.

The moment you enter, the warrior makes herself known. She waits, at the furthest stall, with her elbows on the table, beckoning you with brief, impatient flashes of yoki.

You go to her.

"Hello, little one," she says.

"What are you doing here?"

"Same thing I could ask about you."

"And why're you hiding your yoki?""

"Being cautious, you know," she says. "And discreet."

"By getting smashed in a tavern full of humans, Dietrich?"

"Eh in a few hours' time, no one will even remember I'm here."

Each breath comes with the flowery smell of mead. She looks drunk, or at least halfway there. Or pretending to be for the sake of the humans in the tavern.

"Why don't you join me?"

"I don't – "

"Master! A flagon for our young warrior here."

"She's talented, creative and a master with her sword," Sister Latea once told you about Dietrich. "However, her judgment is –"

"What do you mean by 'her judgement'?"

"Sometimes I can't tell if she's deliberately slow just to make you underestimate her."

"What?"

"Oh and did I tell you that she lost to me in the most epic drinking battle in Rabona's history?"

What was it with everyone and their love for drinking?

In the intervals between the sombre hover of the tavern master, Dietrich finishes a flagon of mead in one full swing. No flourish, no satisfaction, just a thirst that you've not noticed before. The seniors marvel.

You look around. Husayn and the seniors are buying all the alcohol they can get from the tavern master. Gold coins from Sister Latea's purse wink and sparkle on the table. The girls from your group sing and serenade an older man to dance with them. The other men in the tavern – an assorted collection of townspeople and armed men – whoop for Dietrich every time she polishes off a flagon. Everything here ignores you.

Except Nurit. She returns, takes a seat in the empty chair beside Dietrich and begins drinking from your flagon. For an entire minute, nothing captures your attention but the capillary motion of Nurit's sweaty throat.

When she finishes, she looks at you and Dietrich. "You two know each other?"

"Yeah. She's the saviour of Rabona," Dietrich says.

You feel your eyes roll to the back of your head.

"No, really," Dietrich says. "She awakened – you what's that right? – just so she could change into a monster to defeat a bigger monster."

"Huh."

"She never told you?"

Nurit looks at you, then she stares into her empty flagon.

"What am I doing with my life?" she says, then stumbles off to join Husayn's gang, leaving you and Dietrich alone again.

"I hope the rest of your friends know that you're a warrior –"

"And I don't need you telling them," you say.

Dietrich raises her hands, as if she's backing away from you. She settles in to her seat and beckons the tavern master for more drinks.

This has never happened before. Sister Latea doesn't harp your achievements before students and residents in the orphanage school, and definitely not to your fellow seniors. It's something Sister Latea prefers. Anonymity, equality and an understanding that everyone was striving to carve a better future – all these were part of Sister Latea's lessons.

You get a deep urge to curl into yourself at the mention of the word "hero".

"What's wrong with being a hero?" Dietrich asks.

The tavern master deposits small, round glasses with a bronze-coloured liquid in it. Iron flecks float in the glass. He lines them up, all five of them, like a soldiers at attention. Where Dietrich has the gold for all of this is a mystery you'll never know.

"Nothing wrong with being a hero," she says, again, louder more pointed this time. She grabs a cup. "Walnut brandy. To your health!"

"I don't want to be remembered as a hero."

"Oh yeah?"

"Especially when there isn't much to remember."

Dietrich stops, post-swig, and gives you a look that's maybe confusion, maybe pity. You hate it when people give you that look, especially warriors, so you continue talking.

"There's pieces of my life I can't remember. Like there's a white curtain over everything."

"What can you remember?"

"My life before the Organisation, my parents, living in Rabona, being part of the war," you tell her. "But not why."

"Why what?"

"Why I'm in Rabona. How deserving I am of this 'hero' label."

"Ah, Miata, Miata," she says. "People drink to forget. You seem obsessed with trying to remember."

She shoves a glass at you, and you take it because Dietrich will keep pressing if you don't. It tastes of the pines and flowering trees, the sharp aftertaste of alcohol wintering deep in your throat.

"Now, look at your friends. There, that nice blonde boy of yours." Dietrich points at Husayn. "What do you see?"

A trainee in the Guardsmen regiment. Months digging trenches. More months in the rain off fighting Rabona's petty territorial disputes. A reunion with you at the wall. He looks like a phantom. He's missing teeth. He dies because healers can't clean his wound properly.

"Very good," she says. Her finger pivots to Nurit. "Now her."

Sewing, laundry, or a lifetime of serving. Or a lifetime of waiting with her sisters in the church. Tending to the frail, tending to the old, tending to the sick. Or tending to a man who will never be around. Or, if she's unable to attain an honourable profession, there's only one other place where female orphans go: the brothels beside the barracks.

"She likes you, you know."

"Nurit?"

"She was asking me if all warriors are so oblivious, like you," Dietrich takes another shot. "So I told her you're just playing hard to get."

"Dietrich!"

"Maybe that's what she's drinking like a horse. To get the courage to make the first move."

She nods at another glass. You take it because you're trying to steel yourself about the thought of being face-to-face with Nurit, back in the school, under Sister Latea's vulture-like gaze.

"Some people drink to forget the past. Some to forget their future. All like the buzz of the now," Dietrich says. "There's only the now."

"And what about you?"

Dietrich leans back on her seat. The piss-coloured light of nearby candles can't hide the flush of drinking from her face, or the splayed endpoints of her twin ponytails stuck to her neck by sweat. Her arms are cross-hatched with what you think is sunburn from her tracking duties. A rooster tail of mud stains her warrior's cape.

"I drink because I survived the Organisation and war." She gives a delicate drunken burp. "And also because I like feeling drunk."

As Dietrich asks for another round, the cacophony of the tavern quiets. Husayn, Nurit and the rest of the seniors begin to slur their words, sitting around silently sipping their wines and mead. Are they contemplating the uncertainty of their futures? Or is this just a pause in their boisterous celebration of now, a moment that you truly believe, is special.

Only for the reality that none of you will be together in the same place again after next week.

"Drink. Last one's yours."

As the shot leaches all taste from your throat, you feel a light-headedness, a stabbing ache on the back of head. This is what being slightly drunk feels like. So, you release a tiny amount of yoki to dissolve all that alcohol.

For a brief moment, it feels like you're expanding, waking up from a crippling tiredness. And like before, you see a brown-haired lady before you, reaching out to take your hand. She's seated where Dietrich is.

But when her hand brushes your chin, she fades. Now, it's just Dietrich looking at you.

"What did you just do?"

"Release some yoki to clear my head."

"But there was someone – Never mind, I must be really drunk."

Dietrich's solution is to stumble for her flagon and nosily slurp its contents. The entire tavern looks moodily at her, the only noise in the quiet space.

"Remember, Miata. There's only the now," Dietrich says. She turns to the tavern. "Walnut brandy on me! Let's make this a night everyone will remember!"

The tavern comes alive again with applause and cheers. The tavern master sighs, but still starts pouring from a cask of walnut brandy, lining out glasses on his counter like gifts. Dietrich, blinking and rubbing her eyes as she walks, extracts herself from her seat and hands a glass to you.

"Hold it!" she says. "I propose a toast! Outside, everyone!"

The rowdy crowd heads outdoors, holding their drinks, the seniors leading with Dietrich. You follow. They gather at the lake, the mountains soaring beyond the glassy surface.

Dietrich raises her glass to the moon, her shadowy figure lit by the light catching the liquid and glass in her hand. Everyone else follows.

"A toast to the present!" she yells, a commander leading the inebriated. "Because there's no better time than the now."

"The now!" everyone echoes.

They all down their shots in shambling, partially awake movements. For a moment, you catch Nurit, her entire figure incandescent in moonlight. Dietrich congratulates her and their other seniors. You think perhaps maybe Sister Latea was wrong about Dietrich –

Then, Dietrich peels off her armour and jumps into the lake.

Encouraged by Dietrich, Husayn, Nurit and the other seniors link hands and run into the lake together.

This isn't how you expected the night would end. Behind you there's still the horses, the long return to Rabona, and the inevitable showdown with Sister Latea's disapproval. How did you end up here, on the shores of a mountain lake, your fellow orphans calling for you to join them?

"Some things you have to do for yourself," Sister Latea once said to you.

"And what does that mean?" you threw back. "Are any of my decisions mine? First, the Organisation. Then the orphanage. Finally for Rabona's service in the future. What – ?"

"It just means," she answered, giving you that heavenly smile, "you accept your actions have consequences beyond your present decision."

"I don't want to fear the effects of things I can't control."

Sister Latea laughed. "Welcome to a warrior's life, my dear Miata."

There is only the present. In that present, you're a warrior. You're not awakening, neither are you a complete social outcast. You have visions. But they're just a shard of mystery, a window that you'll have your entire life to understand.

You remove your Claymore, and your leather boots. You pass your glass to the tavern master, who's arrived outside to watch the spectacle.

"Hold this. It's important," you tell him.

You take a running start, then dive. A moment when you're sailing through the air, clearing the debris on shore. Then, impact. Your ears burst. Your vision deepens. You hit the bottom and begin to kick towards the moon-kissed surface.

Everyone's in the water. But the person you swim to is Nurit. Drenched, cold and reeking of alcohol, she hangs onto your arm, dunking you underwater.

"Sorry."

"I think Sister Latea who advise against swimming when drunk," you tell her once you've vacated all the water from your mouth.

"Speak for yourself."

"I'm not drunk I'm –"

Before you can speak in your defence, Nurit cuts off your words with a teeth-chattering kiss. You taste walnut brandy and the stale flavour of stagnant lake water. Your seniors erupt in cheers. Husayn gives you a thumbs-up.

She gives you a watery smile, so paralysing that you almost forget to tread water.

In the background, someone says, "Finally."

Dietrich backstrokes nearby. In her wake, the waves test your ability to stay afloat. You tread water as the seniors crowd around, gathering in a circle. Cold water seeps up your arms, freezing your arms, threatening to let loose a cramp in your thighs.

Beyond the moon gazes down like a sign, pointing the way forward. Your arms are around both Husayn and, on your left, Nurit. Her head touches yours. The future looms like the mountains. But this is the now, and you're learning to enjoy it.

.

.

.

_**End** _

**Author's Note:**

>  **Thank you for reading!**. 
> 
> Please leave a comment or any feedback. It'll make my day :)
> 
> This fic was hard to write, because it's 2nd POV and one-single scene. Then there are many little headcanons I thought up - Miata's yoki releases helping her remember, how warriors react to these releases in different ways, Miata's relationships with her friends in the orphanage - that I wanted to elaborate more on. But I've decided to leave them open, because of the lack of space. Maybe some of you can expand more on them. 
> 
> This is my third Claymore fic written during lockdown, and the second to include both drinking (though I'm a teetotaler) and Miata. Don't ask me why. Inspiration works in weird ways.
> 
> Nine down, one more to go before I finish the 'Evenings without Echoes' project!


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